le mot just
the piquant phrase
the simple model rising magnificent
from cavalcades
of stoic tumbling

threads through like
weave which clothes me
presentable to the world …

but no one sees the
emperor’s clothes of
such fine thread it cannot
be seen, no wise child
to point and exclaim
the hang and drape
to put an end to all step –
“look, mummy, that man
is not an emperor!”

less than naked
I am seen right through
adrift of discourse
I step with stubborn countenance,
all the better to
stare myself into existence,

awkward and
hidden away in some attic
lest I lose [what I haven’t
got] self-contained in trembling
vanity, secretive in hope
of things to come, desparate
in tragedy that my grimy
portrait might be seen …

wander, wander
around the flowers, smell
their colour, breathe their
light and let the light rain
fall in shards of rainbow,
cleansing with love –

retirement #3 when in Granada … visit the Alhambra, and visit the Generalife gardens … [if you have booked up to three months ahead]; on the walk up to the palaces are trees and shrubs which are plenty-watered by sprinklers, in the morning sun the sprays will often catch a rainbow at their edge; the bordered captions in the poem are comic-conjunctives, there is a beginning, middle and end being told here, folks; the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as “it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!”; but what’s ‘gone’: “the slings and arrows of outrageous romance” … of one’s self and the whole world positioned awkward to placate its mewling little story, as stolen by Joni Mitchell, who was talking too much at the time, from ‘Willy the Shake’;

{Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); I haven’t been up there for awhile, certainly since the echoing tragedy of Lee Rigby’s death on 22nd May last year; I wrote snatches of life as usual and came home; I realised that the snatches patch-worked together and worked them into a whole landscape which they had ever were in the first place; I know it’s a long piece but please pursue it for the sake of Woolwich; I realise now that my previous visits’ writings need some rendering due-ly …}

Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

all fractured now, slightly misshapen, still
holding together, the grubby art deco window that
coloured the stairwells bracing two rooms
maybe three now, don’t know why they used coloured

glass, the bay windows still looking up the street looking
down, occasional five-finger buddleias like Empire
plaques on the wall above top floor windows
scud clouds above the coping

then flights of step up and up and straddling and down
the storeys of irregular variegated plastic cladding
upwards upwards for to breathe free and live while people
pass on the wet street with small steps and quiet slippers

I had a dream once something anxious and dreadful
followed me going into and out of Polytechnic Street
from Wellington along by the stacked flanks of seventies
double-glaze all screened and blinded from the street

cannot see in cannot see out, people walk awkward
on the tiles flexing metatarsals under the slight over
hang of the library from the colding rain while, look,
a rainbow arches hidden down the side-street turning

the bricks and glazing purple, no one looks up
arranging bank loans, arranging brunch, after noon
the sun divides streets in half, the buildings too
dark to see the shop fronts too dazzled to walk into

the sun favours ambitious plants between torn-down
building and upright support, plays along the side
of preserved plots – flanged shadow from pipework and
signage across circular windows – eye to the sky – under

hand-brow, too bright even for tinted glasses;
so many of my people generations poor in the sun
from Empires and Union under the Royal Arsenal
Gatehouse; each passing step collapsed and proud knot

in kneed of any support, thank you: their shadows reach me
down the Square’s access channel long before their pain
walks by: I don’t know any of you now with your plastic ID
badges with your back-pat handshakes and bent-heads

sincere-talk, grouped and scattered by the public toilets
your drunk over-emphases your ways like pigeons – where are
all the pigeons? – and your beautiful language aged as
public benches; dark clothes to wear, light clothes to buy

and you don’t know me – lost son haunting the streets – but
I love you all constant as the windows proud above roofline
between turrets looking onto the Square; I long ago made
my vow to you at a time when borders seemed important
I know, I know I am slow but I return again and again to see you
and you break my heart each time I learn to smile again

out towards Plumstead on the lower road (I cannot find
the tree I found before through all my travelling) new trees
and tapered posts with lights for the road and lights for the
pavement and posts just waiting, reaching into the blue blue sky

you have been done up many times, Genesta*, so
I only notice now what hasn’t changed, for the first time:
unassuming tapered pillars between the windows and bays
of my youth that reflect the blue sky now (yellow leaves

highlight the paving and tarmac wet like petrol) only noticed
when a swift skeeks across one pane, not the other;
up Dallin Road, she’s got through another day
she’s survived the juddering divided walls of ‘have to’

the way things are these days, with music in hand
she makes rewarded way along the steely street where
the sun has slipped below the higher roofline, singing her
do-do-do’s to the endless chorus ‘why do we do it;

how do we do it?’, and looking for her house keys
under metal clouds; the long grass grows rosettes around
yellow leaves, brown leaves, by the leaning iron fence the
steep tarmac cracks and the shorter grass takes over; past the

bronze age tumulus it’s clear, London’s grown up a lot
since I watched Francis Chichester sail up the river
from the window up on Eglinton Hill – something he did –
now there are Shards and Wharfs and stacking planes

and significant lights denoting all manner of whey and access but
still my nose is running and I need to have a wee; I suppose
I need to get home now the light is fading slow and fast
at 52 – the ash has only lost its upper leaves by the roof

at 48 there is afternoon tv after electric piano practise is done
at 44 – the estate agent climbs awkward into her clean soft-top with
high clip heels; at 36 – a lantern shines arched in the porch while
sirens circle the borough and there’s nothing left here now outside 46

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes.
~ Annie Dillard